Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: MiAmigo on January 09, 2005, 03:14:50 PM
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Almost everyday, I spend a significant amount of time on Aminet looking for applications to enhance my OS3.9 environment. (Note to self: Get my life back!). As the days went by, I noticed that doing this always made me feel a little ‘guilty’ but I never could put my finger on why. It actually took me quite some time to realize the answer to those nagging feelings of guilt. It was because I was kind of uncomfortable with the fact that, piece-by-piece, what I’m actually doing (without even admitting it to myself) is no less than trying to recreate my Windows environment on the Amiga. This idea unsettled me a little, since one of the main reasons I got the thing was to get a break from what I considered all the things that are ‘wrong’ with PCs in general, and Windows in particular.
But, then I had to admit, attempting to ignoring the fact that there are actually ‘good’ things about Windows (that have evolved over the years from customer use and input) is like ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water’, and denying myself some real conveniences. Things like proper handling of long filenames, right-click menus and scroll wheels, ‘auto-arrange’ to keep icons neat and orderly, and controls that allow a user to resize a window without having the drag the damn thing by a corner every-single-time!
So, yeah, I decided, I do like those features, and its actually NOT wrong to want them on my Amiga, but, where do I draw the line? Isn’t it true that the proliferation of such enhancements, taken to the extreme, is actually what bogs Windows down, make it huge, sloppy, bloated and buggy? (And the fact that its comprised mostly of lots of ‘spaghetti’ code, haphazardly thrown together in an inelegantly written mish-mash of C and VB, concocted by a dozens if not hundreds of nameless programmer-drones under the relentless taskmaster's whip of one W. Gates).
Well, while all that may be true, there is some ‘good’ left in Windows, as in all modern OSes. Having reconciled my guilt, now, all I have to do is decide when and where to stop adding ‘stuff’ to my Amiga environment, keeping it lean, mean, and clean, AND modern, and functional. So, I ask myself at each download, “Do I really need that screensaver-photo-rotator? Is it absolutely necessary to have the ‘right’ application pop up, whenever I insert a CD, or double-click on a file? Do I really want ANY application to gobble up my precious clock cycles by running constantly, even when I’m not using it? Can’t I do some of this stuff myself? Just where DO I draw the line?”
:juggler:
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From a certain perspective, a lot of the fun in owning a personal computer is making it just that....personal!
Just keep going until you can't stand the clutter/loss of speed and then buy a new (faster) machine and start all over again ;-)
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I think that one of the great things about the AmigaOS is that it IS so configurable. One of its strong points is that you can adjust things to be more the way you are comfortable with. If you happen to tend to like some things the way Windows does them, there's no foul in that, and you have every right to do it that way.
But realize that some of the things you mention aren't necessarily Windows-specific mimicing. You'll find a screensaver photo rotator for any OS, not just Windows. Unix systems has window resize on any edge. I use my mouse scrollwheel under Linux quite a bit...
I myself have done things to make it somewhat unix-like, enabling star-wildcards, aliasing unix command names to amiga shell commands, etc. I'm trying to install an X-window server/client on my Amiga, use openSSH, have Cygwin on my Windows PC, and wish there was X-windows, openssh, and subversion (successor to CVS) for OS4. I don't see why I should feel guilty about this.
Think about it this way. Would you rather have some neat feature running in AmigaOS that isn't put there by the AmigaOS install CD, or would you rather trade your "guilt" for "jealousy" of some other OS that has what you want your Amiga to do? Don't worry. Be happy.
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Haha, nice dancing badger JKD...
:-D
Actually I've been doing a lot of Aminet shopping lately and I often
throw out the startbar style Windows stuff - it's often quite
bloated.
However I don't see any problem in accepting a good idea, thank
heavens we are not being forced to pay a license fee for them!
;-)
I'm sure there are an equal number of Windows owners who feel sheepish
about making their desktop more like the Amiga via PC-based Directory
Opus and UAE.
Can someone tell me though, what is Tools->ResetWB for in the menu? I
never did find it useful in any way whatsoever.
:-D :-D :-D
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JKD wrote:
From a certain perspective, a lot of the fun in owning a personal computer is making it just that....personal!
Just keep going until you can't stand the clutter/loss of speed and then buy a new (faster) machine and start all over again ;-)
You made me chuckle! :-P That's how I screwed up all my Windows machines! (OOPS! I didn't say that! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!).
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billt wrote:
I think that one of the great things about the AmigaOS is that it IS so configurable. One of its strong points is that you can adjust things to be more the way you are comfortable with. If you happen to tend to like some things the way Windows does them, there's no foul in that, and you have every right to do it that way.
But realize that some of the things you mention aren't necessarily Windows-specific mimicing. You'll find a screensaver photo rotator for any OS, not just Windows. Unix systems has window resize on any edge. I use my mouse scrollwheel under Linux quite a bit...
I myself have done things to make it somewhat unix-like, enabling star-wildcards, aliasing unix command names to amiga shell commands, etc. I'm trying to install an X-window server/client on my Amiga, use openSSH, have Cygwin on my Windows PC, and wish there was X-windows, openssh, and subversion (successor to CVS) for OS4. I don't see why I should feel guilty about this.
Think about it this way. Would you rather have some neat feature running in AmigaOS that isn't put there by the AmigaOS install CD, or would you rather trade your "guilt" for "jealousy" of some other OS that has what you want your Amiga to do? Don't worry. Be happy.
You are correct sir, on several points. As a matter of fact, while adding capabilities to my machine, I, too, have added a few Linux/Unix like features, that I find very useful on those machines on my network. Things like a bsh shell, and a full suite of TCP/IP commands. I also added several search wildcards, which come in very handy if you cut your teeth on DOS, like I did, in those days following my move from the Amiga to the PC camp, way back in the day. But there's just so much on Aminet! I think its the largest centrally located collection of downloadable software for one platform on the Internet! And sometimes, I feel like I want it all! Oh, what to choose! :-o :crazy:
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Yeah, what is that thing for, anyway? (Tools->ResetWB). I ofthen hit it when I'm bored, but it doesn't really do anything.
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Uh, ResetWB forces a refresh of your Workbench screen and its windows. You know, like hitting F5 in most Windows applications, including Explorer (which hosts the desktop) (not *Internet* Explorer--that's a separate control).
Trev
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Yeah, what is that thing for, anyway? (Tools->ResetWB). I ofthen hit it when I'm bored, but it doesn't really do anything.
It'll clean up any graphics corruption or glitches on your workbench screen. Also, IIRC, if you manage to copy a workbench configuration file over your current one, hitting "ResetWB" will cause the settings in the new file to become active.
Not terribly useful anymore, as it's fairly rare that something corrupts your workbench screen, and the new ENV: / ENVARC: system makes more sense than the old "system-configuration" file.
Now, as an interesting piece of trivia, if you edit your startup-sequence and make the "LoadWB" line into "LoadWB -debug" you'll get a new item below "ResetWB" that is "flushlibs". That'll scan your resident libraries and free any that aren't currently in use, thus giving you more free RAM. :)
I think you also get an item named "romwack" which you don't want to pick unless you like freezing your Amiga while it waits for a special code on the serial port. (The only way out is a three-key salute.)
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Well despite the fact that many of us want to describe our old hero's as philosophical genius's...the fact is, the legacy doesn't include much in the way of philosophy.
That is why we are left with a few generalities that might relate to a philosophy...reject bloat, stay lean, etc.
But you know, one of the common issues, is that the RAM, bus, processor limitations of yesteryear, were understood as limitations at the time. Those were limitations that would have been gladly overcome, had it been practical.
Now, as the last remnants of this old religions, we kind of have a {bleep}ized understanding of what was trying to be accomplished back then.
The original Mac OS was fairly lean...it had to be to run on a machine with 128k of ram and only a floppy drive. But the Mac OS philosophy has nothing to do with being lean (or custom chips, or a specialized bus)...
Mac OS X, could never run on minimal specs, in fact to run it nicely you really need a G4 with AGP....does that mean Mac OS X has no relationship to the original system software? Of course, not...but its easy in the Mac world what to adopt and what to not adopt.
If something is appealing, if it is easy to use, if it doesn't frustrate the user, if it makes you more productive in your work...need to consider that as an option.
I did always like the idea that there is something different about the Amiga. I used to address this very concern, before I realized no one cares anymore. It's about treating the user with intelligence, that they are capable of understanding complex ideas, at the same time, appreciating ease of use.
Does it all sound too generic? Well, the practical application is...did the author of the program make it scriptable..i.e. extensible to the user, allowing at first glance, a newbie to operate it in its essentail features, but allowing the expert user to both expand on it, and even call its functionality from their own programs.
This is an amiga like program... if you want to keep the faith, you expand your amiga similarly. If a program is clearly nothing more than a windows hack, dumbed down in everyway...I don't like it.
Anyway...too each their own. There isn't any consensus of what 'amiga' is, and there won't be now.
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I never did grasp AREXX...
Maybe I need a book on it.
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It's been difficult using AmiagOS primarily for fifteen years, before using WindowsXP and finally going back to AmigaOS again now that WinUAE is working satisfactorily.
There are things about XP I like, the task manager being one as killing an unstable program without having to reboot your system is a luxury. Multi-user support too is welcome, as is the way that XP treats media files and pictures (ie showing them as thumbnails in directorys).
And then I think of all the things that frustrate, like slow boot times, the spyware issues and MS's obsessive need to be the biggest name, if not necessarily the best quality...
If you flip between my PC and Amiga desktops, you notice similarities, but that's because I like to tweak my desktop a certain way, with certain colours.
I love the way that Amiga's OS is so damn configurable, the way that Visual Prefs and Birdie seem to produce stunning results with little or no CPU overhead (which let's face it is critical on the vast majority of our systems). I have spent hours tweaking the GUI to a fine degree and am mostly pleased with the results.
If only I could remember how to get Birdie to work!
The problem with the above is that it isn't integrated into the Amiga's actual OS. It would be nice if it were, as we'd all have destop eye candy to rival anything else out there, but the downside is that fiddling is required to get Birdie to work, to make sure the palette in Visual Prefs is locked etc. So many times I've got the colours spot on, only to save my preferences and be greeted with Magenta window borders.
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I dont think you're doing anything wrong. Windows, while bloated, has alot of cool features that you want to have on a obsolete OS. If you want different, run Linux on your x86 box.
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It's really a catch-22.
I like XP. It does everything I think an OS should, and everything I think AmigaOS should have done. I don't think XP is perfect by any stretch of imagination, but I like it because it includes a lot of things that I don't have to even think about, like multi-user support, an IP stack, browser (even if I choose to use Mozilla), and media players.
On the other hand, AmigaOS has none of that stuff to make it end-user friendly (like mom and pop friendly, not Amiga-geek friendly), but Amiga users always whine about how "putting all that crap in would add bloat and eliminate choices which is anti-Amiga" but that's really short-sighted. Memory and hard drives are cheap, especially for the outdated slower PPC systems, so stop {bleep}ing about the resources.
My choice is to take the time to write the damned OS correctly, where -- on installation -- the user can decide whether he wants a base (pretty much non-networked) stripped-down AmigaOS 4 (so they can add their own toys) or they can choose to add in an IP stack and a browser, media players, etcetera. In other words, bundle absolutely everything with the OS, but make it 100% user-choice to install any part of it (where possible).
In that respect (and don't start in on this but) I think Genesi initially had the hint of the right idea with the Superbundle. Unfortunately their licensing and execution is pretty much kerplunkt.
Wayne
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Wayne wrote:
It's really a catch-22.
I like XP. It does everything I think an OS should, and everything I think AmigaOS should have done. I don't think XP is perfect by any stretch of imagination, but I like it because it includes a lot of things that I don't have to even think about, like multi-user support, an IP stack, browser (even if I choose to use Mozilla), and media players.
On the other hand, AmigaOS has none of that stuff to make it end-user friendly (like mom and pop friendly, not Amiga-geek friendly), but Amiga users always whine about how "putting all that crap in would add bloat and eliminate choices which is anti-Amiga" but that's really short-sighted. Memory and hard drives are cheap, especially for the outdated slower PPC systems, so stop {bleep}ing about the resources.
My choice is to take the time to write the damned OS correctly, where -- on installation -- the user can decide whether he wants a base (pretty much non-networked) stripped-down AmigaOS 4 (so they can add their own toys) or they can choose to add in an IP stack and a browser, media players, etcetera. In other words, bundle absolutely everything with the OS, but make it 100% user-choice to install any part of it (where possible).
In that respect (and don't start in on this but) I think Genesi initially had the hint of the right idea with the Superbundle. Unfortunately their licensing and execution is pretty much kerplunkt.
Wayne
All very well said, Wayne. I, too, like XP. Issues with IE aside, it does everything I want very, very well. It's installation is turnkey. I've always said that while you can fault MS for a great many things, at least they've helped drive technology: I'd much, much rather be playing with a 120gb HD than the 170MB hard drive my first PC had (it eventually wound up with bad sectors, and I had doublespaced it, and installed Win'95...what a mess).
If AmigaOS had a big footprint and had the features of WinXP, I wouldn't mind in the least. These are not the days of $200 per megabyte RAM any more. Bring on the features!
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I tend to draw the line at 1.3. I just get that Kickstart disc near my maching and I get cold feet. To much feature bloat if you ask me.
:-)
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FastRobPlus wrote:
I tend to draw the line at 1.3. I just get that Kickstart disc near my maching and I get cold feet. To much feature bloat if you ask me.
:-)
:-D
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B00tDisk wrote:
Wayne wrote:
It's really a catch-22.
I like XP. It does everything I think an OS should, and everything I think AmigaOS should have done. I don't think XP is perfect by any stretch of imagination, but I like it because it includes a lot of things that I don't have to even think about, like multi-user support, an IP stack, browser (even if I choose to use Mozilla), and media players.
On the other hand, AmigaOS has none of that stuff to make it end-user friendly (like mom and pop friendly, not Amiga-geek friendly), but Amiga users always whine about how "putting all that crap in would add bloat and eliminate choices which is anti-Amiga" but that's really short-sighted. Memory and hard drives are cheap, especially for the outdated slower PPC systems, so stop {bleep}ing about the resources.
My choice is to take the time to write the damned OS correctly, where -- on installation -- the user can decide whether he wants a base (pretty much non-networked) stripped-down AmigaOS 4 (so they can add their own toys) or they can choose to add in an IP stack and a browser, media players, etcetera. In other words, bundle absolutely everything with the OS, but make it 100% user-choice to install any part of it (where possible).
In that respect (and don't start in on this but) I think Genesi initially had the hint of the right idea with the Superbundle. Unfortunately their licensing and execution is pretty much kerplunkt.
Wayne
All very well said, Wayne. I, too, like XP. Issues with IE aside, it does everything I want very, very well. It's installation is turnkey. I've always said that while you can fault MS for a great many things, at least they've helped drive technology: I'd much, much rather be playing with a 120gb HD than the 170MB hard drive my first PC had (it eventually wound up with bad sectors, and I had doublespaced it, and installed Win'95...what a mess).
If AmigaOS had a big footprint and had the features of WinXP, I wouldn't mind in the least. These are not the days of $200 per megabyte RAM any more. Bring on the features!
Same here. I like XP. A lot. But I also like key lime pie, and pecan pie. Doesn't mean I like what those things do to me, in the end (no pun intended!), or the fact that there are always *ahem* 'leaner' alternatives. And, as far as fully-tweakable environments, like 0S3.9, there is a 'thin line' where its hard to tell the difference between enough and too much.
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like 0S3.9, there is a 'thin line' where its hard to tell the difference between enough and too much.
With respect, no, there's not. It's really an apples versus oranges comment. What's "not enough" for one is obviously "too much" for someone else. So.... In my own words, give the user everything, let THEM decide what to install (or not).
At 38 years old (and I'm sure a lot of you will get to feel the way I do), I just want an OS that does what I want without me having to futz with it, or download 100 add-ons, or "work for days to configure". I, like most average computer users, just want something that pretty much makes the computer (and even the OS) a transparent extension of the way that I think.
The Web is one of those type inventions that literally changed the way I think, act, and work. I know you guys are probably too young to remember this, but before there was "google", finding information about things was actually fairly difficult. Now, I use google probably 100x per day.
The Amiga in 1985 was one of those inventions that changed the world. Now I'm afraid the world has evolved to the point where creating a "groundbreaking" OS is impossible. BeOS couldn't do it, Apple haven't done it, and Linux is actually going in the opposite direction from the "user-friendly world".
In 1985, the world of computing was all about geeks and kids. Now, computers are very much a part of everyday life, from your car, to your Tivo, to your fridge. The concept of "computing for the geek few" is so far outdated it's not even worth laughing about. I'm very afraid that AmigaOS (and MorphOS) are still aimed at a 1985 audience that has long-since moved on to the real world.
Wayne
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Actually, its not an 'apples versus oranges' comment, from the point of view of what the hardware can handle. In that sense, there is a point where 'too much' can be a problem, if the hardware simply can not handle the work load. Its all fine and good for the (mostly uninformed) user to load up his or her machine with stuff, just because of desire or need to do so, and quite another, if the machine simply can not handle it. And, it becomes quite a problem for Tech Support, and yes, even forums like this one, when those users want to complain about apps that don't work, or games that run too slow. Taking that into account, I would say that the 'thin line' is somewhere between 'what I want', and truthfully assessing what my computer can handle. In other words, if you try to run everything on an A500, that can be run on a fully tricked out A4000T, you'd be in for a very rude awakening. Not every example, of course, would be that extreme, but, I wonder how many requests for help seen on this very forum, could be eliminated entirely, if people would just work within the specs of their particular machine. The thin line is proportionally made fatter by the disparity between people's wants, and their machine's actual capacities and abilities, or the lack thereof.
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I wonder how many requests for help seen on this very forum, could be eliminated entirely, if people would just work within the specs of their particular machine.
None, because Amiga users have NEVER admitted that there even *is* a limit to the capabilities of any Amiga.
The thin line is proportionally made fatter by the disparity between people's wants, and their machine's actual capacities and abilities, or the lack thereof.
Exactly. It's up to Eyetech/bplan to keep up, and essentially, they're now screwed into a corner where they simply can't. They don't have the budget (or the manpower) of an Asus or an Apple. I would regretfully say that the intervention of the "mini mac" closes a lot of doors for both AI and Genesi. Unfortunately such a turn was infinitely predictable.
Wayne
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Having helped quite a few users, I must disagree. Most users don't care for features of any given OS, but rather cares for what applications said platform provides. The smaller things like context-sensitive menus wouldn't really make upfor the fact that the Amiga still hasn't a decent Office-package like Microsoft Office/OpenOffice. When I use MatLab (a math program), I don't care wether it runs on a Linux-box or a Windowsmachine. The Amiga still has a slight edge over Windows, Linux and MAC-OS-X in the fact that the OS still isn't bloated. But sadly the kind of people who needs that kind of lean core aren't in great numbers.
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Dang it MiAmigo! Now you're making me actually think about something!
In my brief experience at Amiga.org, I think I've identified 3 different Amiga personality types:
- Those who are here for pure nostalgia or collecting. (I'm in this bucket 100%)
- Those that use Amiga and want to be more productive with it and even get away from the mainstream OS'es entirely. These guys war over PPC vs Coldfire, OS 3.x vs 4.0 vs MorphOS, etc, but they all want the same outcome - a viable 21st century Amiga.
- Those that use other OS'es primarily, but originally fell in love Amiga because of its technical excellence. These are the guys who wax nostalgic about the Amiga doing things at 7MHz that commodity-grade clones could not muster the power to do at 100MHz.
Anyway - to answer your original question. I think it’s the 3rd group that tries to get their classic Amiga to do more than it was ever designed to do. After all, that is why they originally fell in love with it. The bigger the challenge, the more satisfaction they get if they make it work. As an Amiga 2000 owner, I think you fall in this bucket too, but are recently beginning to feel that you're asking so much of your 2000 that it's unrealistic.
My point is - there are a lot of Amiga users who derive joy from trying to get their systems to do the impossible. It's part of why they are here in the first place.
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My point is - there are a lot of Amiga users who derive joy from trying to get their systems to do the impossible. It's part of why they are here in the first place.
Well spoken, but I would add that there's a fourth group.
4) Those who fell in love with the Amiga in 198x and used it extensively, gaining many friends along the way but due to external factors (work, needs, whatever), they've had to accept the reality of computing and move on -- though they still love the Amiga if only for it's philosophy and sense of nostalgia.
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What group do I fit in?
I own several real Amigas, I run WinUAE on an x86 box solely dedicated to just that, and long for an A1 even if I got an iBook that blows it out of the water. The WinUAE setup is loaded with AmigaWriter, FxPaint 2.0 etc and is used for everything except webbrowsing which my mac handles.
Ofcourse, that's nostalgia in it but also because I like how WB works and its FUN computing. :)
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FastRobPlus wrote:
Dang it MiAmigo! Now you're making me actually think about something!
In my brief experience at Amiga.org, I think I've identified 3 different Amiga personality types:
- Those who are here for pure nostalgia or collecting. (I'm in this bucket 100%)
- Those that use Amiga and want to be more productive with it and even get away from the mainstream OS'es entirely. These guys war over PPC vs Coldfire, OS 3.x vs 4.0 vs MorphOS, etc, but they all want the same outcome - a viable 21st century Amiga.
- Those that use other OS'es primarily, but originally fell in love Amiga because of its technical excellence. These are the guys who wax nostalgic about the Amiga doing things at 7MHz that commodity-grade clones could not muster the power to do at 100MHz.
Anyway - to answer your original question. I think it’s the 3rd group that tries to get their classic Amiga to do more than it was ever designed to do. After all, that is why they originally fell in love with it. The bigger the challenge, the more satisfaction they get if they make it work. As an Amiga 2000 owner, I think you fall in this bucket too, but are recently beginning to feel that you're asking so much of your 2000 that it's unrealistic.
My point is - there are a lot of Amiga users who derive joy from trying to get their systems to do the impossible. It's part of why they are here in the first place.
:inquisitive:
You are super-correct, sir, on all accounts! Especially which category I fall into. It is my curse in this life to push the boundaries of everything I encounter, and the Amiga is no exception. It is also my curse (or gift) to never, ever admit that 'this thing can not be done' or 'this is not feasible' for whatever reason. So yes, I would like to see the Amiga reborn, fully realized, and have it once again take its place as the progenitor and purveyor of technological magic, as it once did. The funny thing? As 'amazing' (stir in a little sarcasm here) as PCs are today, nothing they've ever done has ever flat-out dumb-founded me, as the Amiga did, when it debuted. I think its the memory of that time that keeps us all coming back, and using a machine that, by all intents and purposes, died a long time ago. Its the memory of the wonders that keeps it alive in our hearts (*choke!*).
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Wayne wrote:
My point is - there are a lot of Amiga users who derive joy from trying to get their systems to do the impossible. It's part of why they are here in the first place.
Well spoken, but I would add that there's a fourth group.
4) Those who fell in love with the Amiga in 198x and used it extensively, gaining many friends along the way but due to external factors (work, needs, whatever), they've had to accept the reality of computing and move on -- though they still love the Amiga if only for it's philosophy and sense of nostalgia.
Well, even Microsoft’s Avalon 3D demo was influenced by Amiga nostalgia e.g. "boing demo". MS demonstrator’s MSDN blogs indicates he was ex-Amiga programmer and offered a link to one of Amiga historical sites.
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Well, even Microsoft’s Avalon 3D demo was influenced by Amiga nostalgia e.g. "boing demo". MS demonstrator’s MSDN blogs indicates he was ex-Amiga programmer and offered a link to one of Amiga historical sites.
Yeah, I tried to tell TB that it wasn't intended as an insult to the Amiga. He was rather rabid about it as I recall.
Wayne
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Wayne wrote:
Well, even Microsoft’s Avalon 3D demo was influenced by Amiga nostalgia e.g. "boing demo". MS demonstrator’s MSDN blogs indicates he was ex-Amiga programmer and offered a link to one of Amiga historical sites.
Yeah, I tried to tell TB that it wasn't intended as an insult to the Amiga. He was rather rabid about it as I recall.
Wayne
There are a LOT of ex-Amiga, Sierra, C64, Atari etc. folks influencing the US software and hardware industry even today! Many of them are at the very highest levels of management or product development, and are essentialy designing the things they always wanted to design, but needed stong corporate backing to make a reality.
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FastRobPlus wrote:
There are a LOT of ex-Amiga, Sierra, C64, Atari etc. folks influencing the US software and hardware industry even today! Many of them are at the very highest levels of management or product development, and are essentialy designing the things they always wanted to design, but needed stong corporate backing to make a reality.
I talked with Denny Atkin a few months ago (Denny Atkin's Best Amiga Tips and Secrets). Denny is now working for Microsoft on Longhorn...I'd call that an Amiga guy who's near the center of power!
Bob
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DirectMusic (part of directX) was done by none other than Todor Fay (the bars and pipes guy) of Amiga fame.
It's very true, the PC and the Mac wouldn't be what it is today without the Amiga and multimedia expertise it brought many of us..
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beller wrote:
FastRobPlus wrote:
There are a LOT of ex-Amiga, Sierra, C64, Atari etc. folks influencing the US software and hardware industry even today! Many of them are at the very highest levels of management or product development, and are essentialy designing the things they always wanted to design, but needed stong corporate backing to make a reality.
I talked with Denny Atkin a few months ago (Denny Atkin's Best Amiga Tips and Secrets). Denny is now working for Microsoft on Longhorn...I'd call that an Amiga guy who's near the center of power!
Bob
That's amazing! I bought a wireless NIC from Denny just last month! We didn't talk too much about Amiga. We did talk about the old Access Software a little but. But just goes to show how many oldschool guys are still active!
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Wayne: Memory and hard drives are cheap, especially for the outdated slower PPC systems, so stop {bleep}ing about the resources.
Precisely. When I was working with AMOS (my first programming experience since MLX on the C64), I knew that was the direction that computers were going to take -- interpreted code and no more pre-compiled, low-level stuff. Since I've started working with PHP, Perl, and Java, I will *NEVER* go back to compilers and C. Sure, these run-time and JIT compiled languages are slower and use more memory, but it saves you a HUGE amount of time worrying about low-level stuff, and lets you focus on what you want to do. I don't want to see a new micro-OS that has a 1MByte footprint, because it probably has very little in the way of error correction and reporting, and has flimsy programming interfaces that are easily broken quickly obsoleted by yet more incompatible interfaces. It boggles the mind to think of how many times Microsoft has rewritten the core of thier OS.
Don't forget why UNIX has been around so long. Using Perl to write your scripts is a perfectly viable option to slimmer, more efficient languages, because it gets the job done and saves you a LOT of time.
Now, if only Perl could be updated so it wasn't so damned obtuse. It's good, but frightfully confusing, especially since it has a terrible way of "faking" function calls with subroutines. :-)
Having helped quite a few users, I must disagree. Most users don't care for features of any given OS, but rather cares for what applications said platform provides
Prejudice plays a part. I doubt many people really know how many applications are available for Linux that properly mimic the most popular applications for Windows.
Design is a lost art, though. It's easy to replace ten popular Windows apps with a single, simple tool built into the OS. Very, very few people are truly competent at interface design outside of the Windows and Mac market. Linux drives me nuts. It looks like Windows, but is nowhere near as informative and convenient when it comes to the GUI. Linux people do what pleases themselves and usually lack the level of intuition needed for designing software for ordinary people. It really is still a UNIX clone and a command-promt environment, and will likely stay that way.
Wayne: ...though they still love the Amiga if only for it's philosophy and sense of nostalgia.
Definately. My favorite part about the Amiga is the fact it was so good at balancing the CLI and GUI at the same time, had the most interesting software (like graphic and audio programs which the PC/Mac couldn't handle), and most importantly, was the first personal computer with a truly extensive public domain scene. There were tons of free, useful programs in the Amiga domain long before Linux and PC "shareware" came along!
I still don't think today's GPL'd scene is as good as the PD scene was on the Amiga.
FastRobPlus: There are a LOT of ex-Amiga, Sierra, C64, Atari etc. folks influencing the US software and hardware industry even today!
Which is precicely why the Amiga will never shine again. All the people who originally made the Amiga terrific have moved on to other platforms. With the rediulous licensing schemes used by Hyperion, Amiga, and Genesi, I doubt that kind of free, creative energy will ever come back. I see the Amiga as a reference for a new platform, and a nostalgic toy. But the Amiga itself and its development community is very much dead.
DonnyEMU: DirectMusic (part of directX) was done by none other than Todor Fay (the bars and pipes guy) of Amiga fame.
I'm not surprised. DirectX is a bit quirky, but nevertheless helped make Windows more Amiga-like in terms of multimedia. DirectInput, in particular, was a huge and largely underappreciated leap forward in OS design for which Microsoft deserves a lot of credit. I would never have traded my A1200 for Windows 3.1, but when Win95 OSR2 came along with DirectX, I converted without hesitation.
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Greetings,
Hammer wrote:
Wayne wrote:
My point is - there are a lot of Amiga users who derive joy from trying to get their systems to do the impossible. It's part of why they are here in the first place.
Well spoken, but I would add that there's a fourth group.
4) Those who fell in love with the Amiga in 198x and used it extensively, gaining many friends along the way but due to external factors (work, needs, whatever), they've had to accept the reality of computing and move on -- though they still love the Amiga if only for it's philosophy and sense of nostalgia.
Well, even Microsoft?s Avalon 3D demo was influenced by Amiga nostalgia e.g. "boing demo". MS demonstrator?s MSDN blogs indicates he was ex-Amiga programmer and offered a link to one of Amiga historical sites.
Let's also remember the people behind the Amiga(the Engineers, OS/Software designers, The father(Jay)) that made all this possible that we're all here talking about it in the first place. The same people are still influencing the mainstream PC. I also fall in the category of nostalgia, but I also want to use it for the future. As I said it before, the Amiga Evolves. As long as the People behind the machine drives it, we can still go places with it. As long as there are Web sites that are still dedicated to this fine machine(this site included), we have a better place to come home to and share our experiences with.
Most importantly, the one thin line that makes the Amiga a sweet machine to have is that it made computing a fun and enjoyable thing. Yes Windows maybe easy to use, Amiga made it all *FUN. :-D Now that's priceless!
Regards,
GiZz72
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Yeah, I too fell in love with the Amiga way of doing things... It started out in 1990 with the smug feeling that I could out-do expensive machines costing four times as much with my humble A500 and I never tired of watching vector bobs bouncing around my screen or playing the latest all dancing shoot emp up with all the bells and whistles.
By the mid-90's it was solely about sticking to a platform I knew and loved that would be resurrected one day. Nostalgia for the good old days dictated my decision to stick with the platform.
By the turn of the century I'd just grown used to the Amiga way of doing things, and although my PS2 and PC play games with nicer eye candy, my Amiga boots straight into OS3.9 in a very short time compared even with XP. On UAE it's faster still (less than 10 seconds!), demonstrating the fundamental appeal of the OS.
I'm a terrible "fettler". Before I ride my MTB I can usually be found by the trailside with shock pumps and calculating "sag" settings for the suspension in my head before endlessly tweaking the rebound, compression and preload of my bike's front and rear shocks, before altering the height of the saddle etc. It doesn't actually make me any faster (am embarrassingly slow as a matter of fact), nor can I clear jumps any higher but I have to feel comfortably "dialled-in" with the bike. And I'm exactly the same with my Amiga. I will spend endless minutes tweaking the GUI, messing about with scripts, stack settings (thank you StackAttack!), startup-sequences and MUI preferences. But do I actually achieve more on the Amiga than I do my XP box? No.
Most people can't be arsed with all that, they want an OS that works reliably, runs what the hell they like and will play media files. If they feel like it, they'll upload a new desktop image but that's about it.
Thankfully, AmigaOS can do the above too - provided someone like me hasn't come along and "optimised" a few things...